Tag Archives: ATF

Never a Dull Moment in D.C. – Update for March 27, 2025

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

WASHINGTON WEEK

Last week was a busy one in Washington (at least, according to a Signal chat group I was accidentally invited to join):

Gun rights: The Dept of Justice last week proposed a rule change that will clear the way for letting it set up an office to restore gun rights to people who have been convicted of nonviolent crimes.

guns200304The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – an agency within the DOJ – has the authority to do so now, having been tasked with running the 18 USC § 925 program by the Secretary of the Treasury since 1965 passage of amendments to the Federal Firearms Act of 1938. At the time, ATF was an agency of the Dept of Treasury, and thus it was delegated authority of the Treasury Secretary to hand out gun forgiveness.

The Homeland Security Act transferred the enforcement side of ATF to DOJ in 2002, and substituted the Attorney General for former § 925’s designation of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Back in 1992, Congress could not generate the votes to kill the rights restoration program but Senator Charles Schumer (then a congressman) was able to slip a provision into the ATF’s budget that prohibited the agency from spending any of its budget to operate the program. So while the program remains on the books, no government employee (assuming any are left, Elon) is permitted to spend a second of official time processing applications.

Last week’s proposed rule will withdraw the “effectively moribund” Attorney General’s delegation of authority to the ATF to run the program, letting DOJ handle the rights restoration in house. Presto. ATF may not be able to spend any of its budget on the § 925 program, but nothing will stop DOJ from doing so (unless the Democrats in Congress are able to slide another budget prohibition into the budget).

DOJ said the proposed rule “reflects an appropriate avenue to restore firearm rights to certain individuals who no longer warrant such disability based on a combination of the nature of their past criminal activity and their subsequent and current law-abiding behavior.”

DOJ will take comments on the proposed rule until June 18, 2025.

President Floats Imprisoning Americans in El Salvador: After several incidents of vandalism against Tesla property, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that such acts would be treated as “domestic terrorism” and the perps could be sent to prison in El Salvador.

“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump posted on Truth Social last Friday. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

President Suggests Some Biden Clemencies Are Void: President Trump announced that President Biden’s preemptive pardons of people who served on the January 6th committee are of “no further force or effect” in a social media post just after midnight on Monday.

autopen250327Trump alleged that Biden used an autopen on a number of official documents, including presidential clemencies. Autopens are machines designed to automatically replicate a handwritten signature and have been used for years by presidents to sign large volumes of documents.

Speaking to reporters onboard Air Force One a week ago, President Trump maintained the autopen signature made the clemencies void. However, he said “it’s not my decision” whether Biden’s pardons can be voided, and that it would ultimately be up to the courts.

The concern is that if even one Biden clemency can be voided by a later president, none of them is safe.

Fire the Judge: If I had a nickel for every time a prisoner has asked me how to get his or her judge taken off the case, I’d own my own Caribbean island by now.

Removing a judge is a hard thing to do, especially if the judge’s bias resulted from what she had read and heard in your own case. The U.S. Attorney will always fight removal, too, which is why the DOJ’s sudden push to remove federal judges for the sin of not being Donald Trump fans is so surprising.

Politico reports, “As tensions between the White House and the federal judiciary continue to rise, litigators at the Justice Department are increasingly seeking to have judges removed from cases where they have ruled against the administration.”

Last Friday, DOJ filed a motion to disqualify U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell (District of Columbia) from a lawsuit brought by big-law firm Perkins Coie challenging a Trump executive order that lawyers said was designed to destroy the firm in retaliation for work it had done on behalf of his political enemies. DOJ has accused her of “partiality against and animus toward” the President.

On Tuesday, Judge Howell entered a 21-page Memorandum Opinion and Order eviscerating the DOJ’s motion, noting that litigants’ right to a fair and impartial hearing “does not entitle any party—not even those with the power and prestige of the President of the United States or a federal agency—to demand adherence to their own version of the facts and preferred legal outcome.”

Earlier last week, a separate DOJ attorney asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, calling for U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to be removed from case regarding the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. The letter took issue with what it called Boasberg’s “highly unusual and improper procedures.”

signal250327After Judge Boasberg was selected at random this week to hear a lawsuit against the Administration for the Signal chat debacle, President Trump went ballistic on his Truth Social account last night: “How disgraceful is it that ‘Judge’ James Boasberg has just been given a fourth ‘Trump Case,’ something which is, statistically, IMPOSSIBLE,” Trump wrote.

Newsweek said this morning that “Trump’s statements continue his long trend of claiming that the legal system is rigged against him, which he used as a platform throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.”

DOJ, Delegation of Authority, 90 FR 13080 (March 20, 2025)

The Hill, DOJ creating path for people with criminal convictions to again own guns (March 20, 2025)

Fortune, After the Justice Department charged three people with vandalizing Tesla property, the president floated sending the accused to prisons in El Salvador (March 21, 2025)

Politico, Trump floats sending Americans to foreign prisons. Civil rights groups say that would be illegal. (March 21, 2025)

Newsweek, Donald Trump Sends Warning To Enemies As He Says Biden Pardons Void (March 17, 2025)

Politico, DOJ moves to boot federal judge from Perkins Coie case (March 21, 2025)

New York Times, Judge Assails White House Efforts to Kick Her Off Perkins Coie Case (March 26, 2025)

Newsweek, Donald Trump Rages at Judge Boasberg Getting Signal Case: ‘Disgraceful’ (March 27, 2025)

– Thomas L. Root

ATF Stings Are Slimy… Just Not Slimy Enough – Update for March 20, 2018

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

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N.D. ILLINOIS SLAMS STASH HOUSE STINGS, BUT DOES NOT DISMISS CASES

stash171120We have reported ad nauseam about the battle over whether stash house stings – where federal agents convince unwitting defendants to rob nonexistent stash houses of nonexistent drugs, all so they can arrest them – are designed to target minorities.

Last December, we told you that the issue had come to a head in an unprecedented three-day hearing in Chicago before a panel of nine U.S. district judges.

Each of the judges on the panel was presiding over one or more of 12 separate stash-house cases, with the liberty of 43 defendants at stake. The judges  simultaneously heard expert testimony about the stings after lawyers for all 43 defendants moved for the stash-house charges to be tossed on grounds of racial bias. The testimony focused on dueling experts who reached starkly different conclusions about the racial breakdown of targets in the stash house cases. 

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Real life is not like the movies…

In a decision last week, the chief federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois issued the first of at least nine decisions on the issue, finding that the controversial drug stash house stings run by the ATF have an ugly racial component and should be discontinued. However, Chief U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo  stopped short of dismissing charges against eight defendants, finding that the evidence fell short of proving the stings unfairly targeted blacks and Hispanics.

“These… cases have served to undermine legitimate law enforcement efforts in this country,”  Judge  Castillo said from the bench. “It is time for these false stash house cases to end and be relegated to the dark corridors of our past… Fortunately for the government, the question before this court is not whether the practices used in these sting operations are honorable or fair.”

The remaining judges are expected to issue opinions of their own in coming weeks, and any significant differences among the rulings are expected to lead to appeals.

ATF180321How the 13 Chicago-area cases are decided is being watched across the country, where hundreds of similar stings have been used over the past two decades. While judges in other districts have criticized the operations for inventing crime and targeting vulnerable people, Judge Castillo’s ruling was the first to call them out on the issue of race.

United States v. Brown, Case No. 12-cr-632 (N.D.Ill. Mar. 12, 2018)

– Thomas L. RootLISAStatHeader2small

Rogue Agents, Impaired Judges: A Friday Collection – Update for April 14, 2017

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE BEHAVING BADLY

Two reports the past several days caught our attention, and neither speaks well for the federal criminal justice system.

atf170414ATF Agents Running Amok: First, the New York Times reported Wednesday that ATF agents in Bristol, Virginia, set up a secret bank account, which they funded with millions gained in illegally peddling cigarettes. The agents directed their informants to buy untaxed cigarettes, mark them up and sell them for a profit.

The Times said “the operation, not authorized under Justice Department rules, gave agents an off-the-books way to finance undercover investigations and pay informants without the usual cumbersome paperwork and close oversight, according to court records and people close to the operation.”

The account came to light in a civil suit claiming the agents broke federal racketeering law, brought in the Eastern District of North Carolina by a collective of tobacco farmers, who claim they were defrauded of $24 million. Two ATF informants received at least $1 million each from that sum, according to records produced in the suit. Most of the filings in the case are sealed.

The Times reported that “the scheme relied on phony shipments of snack food disguised as tobacco. The agents were experts: Their job was to catch cigarette smugglers, so they knew exactly how it was done.”

Money from the operations was used for a number of activities, including the renting of a $21,000 hotel suite at a NASCAR race, a trip to Las Vegas and a monetary donation to one agent’s daughter’s high school volleyball team.

ATFA170414What is not being said, of course, is that the agents’ misconduct – and the involvement of informants who took off-the-record payments – could have substantial repercussions in any criminal prosecutions where testimony of those agents or CIs played a role. The Department of Justice Inspector General began investigating the allegations after the Times contacted DOJ about the story.

Guardianship Sought for Federal Judge: A federal judge whose bizarre behavior on the bench preceded her mysterious removal from a number of cases was previously ordered to get treatment for alcoholism so severe a colleague believes she cannot take care of herself, according to court records released Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Minaldi’s alcoholism don’t answer whether it was a factor in the secretive interruptions in her Louisiana courtroom. But the documents show she moved into an assisted living facility specializing in “memory care.”

Minaldi170414In February 2016, during voir dire in a criminal trial, Judge Minaldi failed to determine if jurors were U.S. citizens and delivered no preliminary instructions. After the public defender made a motion for curative measures, the Judge ordered the prosecutor to deliver preliminary instructions to the jury, stopping to complain to the prosecutor, “I have no idea what’s going on here. Get your act together.” After the prosecutor and public defender jointly moved for a mistrial, the chief district judge removed Judge Minaldi from the case and assigned it to Judge Donald Ellsworth Walter, who then declared a mistrial.

The chief judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Judge Minaldi to complete at least 90 days of substance abuse treatment, due to the severity of her alcoholism and “legal consequences she had attained.”

Judge Minaldi, 58, has been on medical leave since the end of 2016. Newly released records showing that she is in a long-term care facility are part of a lawsuit filed by Judge Minaldi’s Magistrate Judge, Kathleen Kay. The lawsuit challenges Judge Minaldi’s physical and mental capacity to manage her personal and financial affairs.

That lawsuit was filed under seal, but portions made public report at as of March 2017, Judge Minaldi’s condition was so severe that she was “unable to take care of her daily activities” and “unable to safely take care of her personal needs, financial matters, or her property matters,” the filing says.

Unlike the ATF situation, Judge Minaldi’s condition is medical, not a breach of trust. But like the ATF situation, the effects of recent revelations could reverberate across any number of criminal cases that appeared in front of the Judge over the past several years.

– Thomas L. Root

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